indeed, it does seem out of this world. But according to the conservative Weekly Standard, the new PBS documentary about Castro is actually fair, balanced and "unafraid." Bravo to PBS for actually getting it right.

An Honest Portrait of Fidel
The new PBS biography of Castro is fair, balanced, and unafraid.
by Duncan Currie
02/04/2005 12:00:00 AM

ADRIANA BOSCH'S much-touted documentary Fidel Castro made its PBS debut Monday night, as part of the network's "American Experience" series. I can already picture conservatives rolling their eyes. "A PBS special on Castro?" But Bosch's piece is remarkable--remarkably good, that is. It explains (1) Castro's messianic appeal to the Cuban people in 1959; (2) his countless failings as a leader; and (3) the barbarity of his rule. Bosch, a Cuban-American, pulls no punches. She interviews former political prisoners and documents the ghastliness of Cuba's jails. She also includes testimony from ex-Castro confidants who fell out of favor with the regime for their anticommunist beliefs, such as Huber Matos.

Yes, there are a few asides about the Cuban revolution's achievements in education and medicine (achievements that are highly debatable, to say the least). But on balance, Bosch paints an objective portrait of El Jefe. She does a bang-up job illustrating how the fatigue-clad strongman of a Caribbean island grew so influential on the world stage.

Specifically, Bosch makes at least three points about Castro that often go unmentioned or under-emphasized. First, Castro exhibited volatile, brutal tendencies at an early age. For example, he was expelled from boarding school for being too unruly. When confronted by his mother, Castro threatened to burn her house down if she didn't get him back into the school. And in the late 1950s, while waging his anti-Batista guerrilla campaign from the Sierra Maestra, Castro governed his forces with an iron fist. His later cruelty was hardly unforeseeable.

Second,
the United States didn't "lose" Fidel Castro to communism any more than it lost Mao Zedong or Ho Chi Minh. Sometime in early 1959, Bosch demonstrates, Castro decided he must drive America out of Cuba. The ideological nature of his revolution demanded it. And by extension, the revolution gave him an instinctive pro-Soviet bent. On his famous September 1960 trip to New York, Castro flaunted his relationship with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. In sum, no matter what mistakes Washington initially made in handling Castro, dissuading him from "going Red" was a futile enterprise.

Third, when the Ford administration sought détente with Havana, how did Castro respond? He poured troops and military advisers into Angola to aid the Marxist-Leninist MPLA. (Moscow saw Angola as a potential linchpin of Soviet interests in Africa.) A few years later, when the Carter administration pushed for rapprochement, what did Castro do? He sent thousands of Cuban fighters to Ethiopia, supported the Sandinista insurgency in Nicaragua, endorsed the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and unleashed the Mariel boatlift. So it's not fair to say a "softer" American line on Cuba would've de-radicalized Castro. We tried that. It failed.

There are a few nuggets Bosch leaves out. She might have addressed Castro's pro-fascist and pro-Axis leanings during the Second World War. He only jettisoned fascism and adopted "socialism" because, well, the Axis powers lost. Bosch briefly hints at Castro's persecution of homosexuals, but could say much more. Also, she does not discuss the regime's tourism apartheid, which segregates ordinary Cubans from foreign travelers, or the fact that blacks ("Afro-Cubans") make up a hefty portion--perhaps a majority--of Cuba's dissident movement.

But these are minor quibbles. Fidel Castro is a superb bit of filmmaking. Anyone interested in twentieth-century Cuban and American history should watch it.

I vividly remember the slightly ludicrous, slightly risqué and somewhat distressing predicament in which Western diplomats in Prague found themselves during the Cold War. They regularly needed to resolve the delicate issue of whether to invite to their embassy celebrations various Charter 77 signatories, human-rights activists, critics of the communist regime, displaced politicians, or even banned writers, scholars and journalists -- people with whom the diplomats were generally friends.

Sometimes we dissidents were not invited, but received an apology, and sometimes we were invited, but did not accept the invitation so as not to complicate the lives of our courageous diplomat friends. Or we were invited to come at an earlier hour in the hope that we would leave before the official representatives arrived, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. When it didn't, either the official representatives left in protest at our presence, or we left hurriedly, or we all pretended not to notice each other, or -- albeit on rare occasions -- we started to converse with each other, which frequently were the only moments of dialogue between the regime and the opposition (not counting our courthouse encounters).

`Dissidents or trade'

This all happened when the Iron Curtain divided Europe -- and the world -- into opposing camps. Western diplomats had their countries' economic interests to consider, but, unlike the Soviet side, they took seriously the idea of ''dissidents or trade.'' I cannot recall any occasion at that time when the West or any of its organizations (NATO, the European Community, etc.) issued some public appeal, recommendation or edict stating that some specific group of independently minded people -- however defined -- were not to be invited to diplomatic parties, celebrations or receptions.

But today this is happening. One of the strongest and most powerful democratic institutions in the world -- the European Union -- has no qualms in making a public promise to the Cuban dictatorship that it will re-institute diplomatic Apartheid. The EU's embassies in Havana will now craft their guest lists in accordance with the Cuban government's wishes. The shortsightedness of socialist Prime Minister José Zapatero of Spain has prevailed.

Try to imagine what will happen: At each European embassy, someone will be appointed to screen the list, name by name, and assess whether and to what extent the persons in question behave freely or speak out freely in public, to what extent they criticize the regime, or even whether they are former political prisoners. Lists will be shortened and deletions made, and this will frequently entail eliminating even good personal friends of the diplomats in charge of the screening, people whom they have given various forms of intellectual, political or material assistance. It will be even worse if the EU countries try to mask their screening activities by inviting only diplomats to embassy celebrations in Cuba.

I can hardly think of a better way for the EU to dishonor the noble ideals of freedom, equality and human rights that the Union espouses -- indeed, principles that it reiterates in its constitutional agreement. To protect European corporations' profits from their Havana hotels, the Union will cease inviting open-minded people to EU embassies, and we will deduce who they are from the expression on the face of the dictator and his associates. It is hard to imagine a more shameful deal.

Cuba's dissidents will, of course, happily do without Western cocktail parties and polite conversation at receptions. This persecution will admittedly aggravate their difficult struggle, but they will naturally survive it. The question is whether the EU will survive it.

Today, the EU is dancing to Fidel Castro's tune. That means that tomorrow it could bid for contracts to build missile bases on the coast of the People's Republic of China. The following day it could allow its decisions on Chechnya to be dictated by Russian President Vladimir Putin's advisors. Then, for some unknown reason, it could make its assistance to Africa conditional on fraternal ties with the worst African dictators.

Where will it end? The release of Milosevic? Denying a visa to Russian human-rights activist Sergey Kovalyov? An apology to Saddam Hussein? The opening of peace talks with al Qaeda?

Coexistence with dictators

It is suicidal for the EU to draw on Europe's worst political traditions, the common denominator of which is the idea that evil must be appeased and that the best way to achieve peace is through indifference to the freedom of others.

Just the opposite is true: Such policies expose an indifference to one's own freedom and pave the way for war. After all, Europe is uniting to defend its freedom and values, not to sacrifice them to the ideal of harmonious coexistence with dictators and thus risk gradual infiltration of its soul by the anti-democratic mind-set.

I firmly believe that the new members of the EU will not forget their experience of totalitarianism and nonviolent opposition to evil, and that that experience will be reflected in how they behave in EU bodies. Indeed, this could be the best contribution that they can make to the common spiritual, moral and political foundations of a united Europe.

indeed, it does seem out of this world. But according to the conservative Weekly Standard, the new PBS documentary about Castro is actually fair, balanced and "unafraid." Bravo to PBS for actually getting it right.

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Other than this quote, you had me:

the United States didn't "lose" Fidel Castro to communism any more than it lost Mao Zedong or Ho Chi Minh.

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We should have switched to Mao, he never would have gone communist. He was ours for the picking. Wrong horse we backed then...

indeed, it does seem out of this world. But according to the conservative Weekly Standard, the new PBS documentary about Castro is actually fair, balanced and "unafraid." Bravo to PBS for actually getting it right.

Click to expand...

Interesting. But any truly balanced piece on Cuba would have to include our government's support for Batista, a dictator at least as brutal and merciless as Castro. There would need to be an explanation of the mafia's support for Batista in order to protect their Cuban gambling interests. It would have to mention the Kennedy-mafia-Cuba connection. It would have to detail our half-assed invasion of Cuba during the Bay of Pigs fiasco and how that related to the Kennedy-mafia connection. We would need to hear about our repeated attempts to assassinate Castro and the suffering caused the Cuban people by our stubborn insistence on a continued trade embargo.

Also it would need to explore the double standard applied to Cubans who come to this country illegally. Why do we allow Cubans to float in and get automatic asylum while we had a picket line of destroyers blocking the influx of Haitians?

I don't think that we'll see a truly objective piece on Cuba and the US. At least not in my lifetime.

Truth to tell, a favorite of mine. Bottom line, the US blew this at the end of WWII. We could have had great relations with China, backed the loser instead.

In 1928, having consolidated power, Chiang was named Generalissimo of all Chinese forces and Chairman of the National Government, a post he held until 1932 and later from 1943 until 1948, when, under a new Constitution passed in 1947, he was elected by the National Assembly to be President.

During and after World War II, Chiang and his American-educated wife Soong May-ling, commonly referred to as "Madame Chiang Kai-shek", held the unwavering support of the United States China Lobby which saw in them the hope of a Christian and democratic China. Chiang Kai-shek's policies were far from Christian or democratic, but this remained unknown to the US public due to strong state-imposed censorship in China and self-imposed censorship in the US during the war years and after.

Chiang's strategy during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) opposed the strategies of both Mao Zedong and the United States. The US regarded Chiang as an important ally able to help shorten the war by engaging the Japanese occupiers in China. Chiang, in contrast, used powerful associates such as H. H. Kung in Hong Kong to build the ROC army for certain conflict with the communist forces after the end of WWII. This fact was not understood well in the US. The US liaison officer, General Joseph Stilwell, correctly apprehended Chiang's strategy was to accumulate munitions for future civil war rather than fight the Japanese, but Stilwell was unable to convince Roosevelt of this and precious Lend-Lease armaments continued to be allocated to the Kuomintang.

The US continued to support Chiang Kai-shek against the communist Red Army led by Mao Zedong in the civil war for control of China.

Chiang resigned as President (and Vice President Li Tsung-jen became Acting President) on January 21, 1949, as KMT forces suffered massive losses against the communists in the Chinese Civil War. In early morning December 10 1949, CPC troops laid siege to last KMT occupied city in mainland China of Chengdu where Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-Kuo directed the defense at the Chengdu Central Military Academy. The aeroplane May-ling evacuated them to Taiwan on the same day; they would never return to mainland China.

Presidency in Taiwan
Chiang moved his government to Taipei, Taiwan where he resumed his duties as president on March 1 1950. Chiang was reelected President of the ROC on May 20, 1954 and later on in 1960, 1966, and 1972. In this position he continued to claim sovereignty over all of China.

Chiang died in Taipei in 1975 at the age of 88 and was interred "temporarily" at Tzuhu, Taoyuan County. His son Chiang Ching-kuo was also entombed in a separate mausoleum nearby. The hope was to have both buried at their birthplace in Fenghua once the mainland was recovered. In 2004, Chiang Fang-liang, the widow of Chiang Ching-kuo, asked that both father and son be buried at Wu Chih-shan military cemetery in Sijhih, Taipei County. The state funeral ceremony is planned for Spring 2005. Chiang Fang-liang and Soong May-ling had agreed in 1997 that the former leaders be first buried but still be moved to mainland China in the event of reunification.

Legacy

He was succeeded as President by Vice-President Yen Chia-jin. However, real power passed to his son Chiang Ching-kuo who was Premier and became President after Yen's term ended three years later.

Chiang Kai-Shek remains a largely unpopular figure on Taiwan because of his authoritarian rule of the island. Since the 1990s, his picture has tended to disappear from public buildings, coins, and money, and in sharp contrast to Sun Yat-Sen and his son Chiang Ching-Kuo, his memory is rarely invoked by current political parties, including the Kuomintang.

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